Southernhighlander

3d0g Absolutely, and you may find Procter and Gamble on Alibaba as well, since Alibaba is a market place for companies from all over the world. I was only letting Indyspirits know that DYE is on Alibaba as well as all of those "million other manufacturers", or at least they were a few months ago. Mr Sun has been trying to sell me his stuff for years and from what he told me, his company manufacturers everything in house.

DYE is an Alibaba manufacturer.

We can build them for you. We have built thousands of plates, mostly bubble cap plates but we have manufactured sieve plates as well. Email me paul@distillery-equipment.com for a quote. If you would like to talk first call 417-778-6100 and ask for Paul http://distillery-equipment.com http://moonshine-still.co http://triclamp.co

Does anyone know what caused the explosion?

Skaalvan, I see what you mean.

Skaalven, I haven't seen any charts that disagree with each other. Please give some examples.

Yes, It is safe to conclude that they are as pure as possible.

What manufacturer said that nitrile and viton are good for ethanol? No testing is needed. All that you have to do is look at a chemical resistance chart. http://www.mossrubber.com/pdfs/Chem_Res.pdf Sanitary EPDM tri clamp gaskets are rated excellent with ethanol, so they are impervious to ethanol. Here are some other materials that are rated excellent with ethanol: Neoprene, Kalrez, Butyl, Hypolon, Viton Extreme, flourosilicone. Here is another chart: http://www.mossrubber.com/pdfs/Chem_Res.pdf

I'm with CaptnKB and SchieferP1, that looks like welding chemicals, left over from fabrication. In this business, all new vessels must be cleaned by the end user, to remove any welding residue and oils etc. Depending on the purpose and other factors, many stainless vessels must also be passivized before use and all will need to be passivized several times before their useful life span has ended. Stills are typically put through at least one cleaning run, before the production of spirits for sale. Common sense tells us that all vessels used for sanitary food grade applications must be cleaned thoroughly before use. At the same time, the manufacturer should supply instructions concerning the cleaning of the equipment, as well as a good safety manual. Also the manufacturer should answer questions and inquiries concerning the equipment in a timely manner. Surely there must be a warranty, though no one's warranty is going to cover the equipment needing cleaning when you receive it. Please let us know exactly what the problem is. We are all very curious.

You can have a column that is too large for a still boiler, but the column would have to be really large. A 16" diameter 2 plate bubble plate column will work fine on a 65 gallon still running low wines and it will do the job really fast if you have enough heat transfer going on. That little 15.5 gallon keg will work great with a 3" pot still column with copper packing and no dephlegmator, to do brandy, or whiskey in 2 runs. The output for the stripping run should be around 25%. Its not safe to put high proof low wines in a direct fire still. On the spirit run, you will be able to hit 60% or a little better. If you have enough heat, each run will take around 3 hrs, once operating temp is reached. If you want higher proofs, you will need a reflux column with deflegmater. So as to have a faster run time at higher proofs, I would go with a 4" bubble plate column: https://shop.distillery-equipment.com/collections/stills/products/4-bubble-plate-copper-stainless-moonshine-still-column-vodka-w-cooling-kit With 10% mash, she will put out 85% no problem, and with a 12 gallon charge you can do a 170 proof run in around 3 hrs. If you want 190 proof and above, you could add 48" of 4" packed column along with the bubble plate column. 2 bubble plates on the bottom then the 4" raschig ring packed section and then 2 bubble plates on top with the correctly sized dephlegmator. We have built several 10 and 20 gallon R&D vodka stills as described above, with 10 or 20 gallon jacketed boilers with our electric Baine Marie heating systems. The vodka columns are modular on ours, so that you can remove the 4" packed section and just run 4 plates, or you can remove all of the plates from the inside and run as a pot still.. There is an extension tube for the final condenser when the still; is in Vodka mode. Here is one our very versatile little 45 gallon R&D stills that can be configured several different ways. https://distillery-equipment.com/45 gallonStill.htm It has very fast run times with our 6" columns. You will need a A Sanitary tri clamp reducer to connect your column to your keg. A 2" tri clamp ferrule with a silicone gasket will clamp directly to the connection on top of the keg. The keg connection is where the keg is tapped, so you will need to pull the guts out of the keg ferrule. The keg ferrule is of a different design than a tri clamp ferrule, but they are close enough, so that they will work together fine and they will seal with a food grade silicone gasket. If your column is a 4" reflux column, to be safe the column should have extra support. With the keg, the Vodka configuration will be well over 10' tall and very top heavy empty. You will need guide wires to support the column. Beer kegs will work but cleaning them sucks. The only way to scrub the inside is with a carboy brush through that tiny hole. If you have to use it then you should cut out the ferrule on top and weld in a 6" tri clamp ferrule so that you can clean the thing properly. I have all of the parts that you need to build your own still on all 3 of these web sites. https://triclamp.co/ http://distillery-equipment.com http://moonshine-still.co Good luck and have fun.

Hedgebird said "If your just looking to blend and bottle and not actually distill then my advice is to not bother at all as no one wants that crap anyways." As far as blending and bottling, you are incorrect. Canadian blended whiskey sales are absolutely huge and certain Canadian blended whiskeys are considered very high end. Flavored Vodka sales are huge as well. Creating a good blended Whiskey and or other blended spirits, utilizing GNS is an art all to itself. What Makami is creating sounds delicious. If you have a distillery, then blending is just another tool in your tool box. I'm not saying that a distillery must blend, I am saying that no one should look down on another person in this industry, because they are blending using GNS. I think what Makami is doing sounds wonderful, well thought out and very artistic I think that the most important thing, is that you make a good product for your customers. Just because you do not make mash and run it through a still does not mean that you are making a crappy product, on the contrary millions of dollars and some great spirits have been made by people who have never made a drop of mash.

Here's the thing. My company has a lot of stills and other equipment out there and we are only a 5 year old company. We have had some issues, just like all fast growing manufacturing and wholesale businesses have, but we have always taken care of our customers. Meaning, if there is a problem with one of our stills, we will take care of it as soon as possible. If I have to send someone 1500 miles to do it, then I will and we have done that. We have a very large list of references and distilleries, that our potential customers can visit to see our equipment in operation. We have good solid equipment at great prices and we are always striving to improve our equipment and service and everything about our business. I'm very proud of our equipment and the business that my employees and I have built and the fact is, I could never have done it without my employees or my customers. When I hear from respectable people about being given timelines of a few weeks and them not getting their stills for almost a year, and they still have not gotten their still and people getting their stills with horribly ugly welds and leaks and then that is fixed after several weeks and the still will still not function properly and the company says that they will send someone out to fix it ASAP, but it has been months and no one has shown up to fix it and they cannot get anyone on the phone and their emails are never replied to and I could go on. That sounds like a nightmare to me and it pisses me off. I have no problem with ADI forum and I will respect their policy and will not mention any names on the forum. I understand that negative posts concerning business can open them up for liability. Paul Hall 417-778-6100 paul@distillery-equipment.com CEO Affordable Distillery Equipment LLC

After rereading my original post I shortened it to the below, because I believe that I came on to strongly. I apologize if I offended anyone. The Scots Irish in me just sort of burst forth. Jo-el-eo is correct. This is a really bad situation. More people who may get ripped off, are placing orders with this company every week and there is no way to get the word out. For all of you who are looking for equipment. The company that we are referencing, that we cannot name on here, is a company that builds stills in the USA in one of the western states. If you fly out to their facility everything looks great, but they don't really have any references, IF A VENDOR CANNOT GIVE YOU AT LEAST 10 REFERENCES DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THEM. This company runs big full page ads in the Distiller Magazine. Their equipment looks really good in their pictures on their web site, but up close not so much.

Still dragon does not sell a heating system for their stills. It's neat that you use a vacuum still. We sell vacuum stills in our other business which involves building equipment for the extraction of oils from plant materials.

Good luck with your endeavor. From the sound of it i think that you will do really well. If you have not already filled your equipment needs, give us a call 417-778-6100 or email paul@distillery equipment.com and check out our web site at http://distillery-equipment.com

Hi Lorenzo, If you are doing Whiskey or Bourbon you will not have any problem getting the ABV that you need in 2 runs with one of our combination mash tun stripping stills. However, we can do a combination Mash Tun stripping and 4 plate column still, or a combination mash tun stripping and vodka still that will also do whiskeys and or anything else that you want to do. Paul@distillery-equipment.com 417-778-6100 http://distillery-equipment.com

Cestrin, Ultra low watt density water heater elements have less than 40% of the watt density of the regular old, strait, no fold water heater elements. Industrial ultra low watt density elements go as low as 15 watts per square inch. I'm a Camco and Chromalox distributor, but for direct fire electric stills, I sell elements that are specifically designed for use in washes (wort) with no solids. They are UL listed, mirror polished, 316 stainless, ultra low watt density, double fold, ripple elements. Brewers love em. So anyway, the difference is more than minor. For Barley wash (wort), it is the difference between scorching and not scorching. It's that simple. We have sold several thousand direct fire stills. The heating systems on all of our electric direct fired stills are proportional control. Also, the greater the difference in temp between the element and the wash the more likely that it is to scorch. If you have a difficult wash then you can use a heating system controller with proportional control to get that watt density a little lower at the beginning of the run and it will be less likely to scorch when the wash is hot. Also, straining out all of the solids is very important. Will changing elements for sure solve your issue? if you were dealing with barley, or certain other wort, I can tell you for sure that it will. For a rye wash, I'm not sure, mainly because if I were going to do rye, I would do it on the grain. I would never distill a rye whiskey from wort. Of course you cannot normally do on the grain distillations using heating elements. You need indirect heat for that. We have very affordable jacketed stills from 8 gallon to 2500 gallon. If I were you, I would use that still for single malts and rum. I can sell you heating elements that will work with those washes for around $30.00 each. Guaranteed no scorch. Maybe they will work for your Rye wash, maybe not. If you fallow Silk City Distillers advice and use the enzymes etc, then I think that you have a better chance with it working with my elements.

Watt type of elements are you using? You may be able to stop the scorching by putting in ultra low watt density elements. Once you let me know what elements that you are using I can give you a recommendation that may solve your problem.

I would suggest a jacketed still. We have them for $3,000.00 and up with self contained electric heating systems. You can distill grain in mashes with no scorching. paul@distillery-equipment.com 417-778-6100

From what I could tell from the pictures they sent me, it will cost between $5,000.00 and $7,000.00 for us to fix it.

Hi Hudson Bay, We supplied the column and gin basket. They sourced the jacketed still pot somewhere else. I repeat we did not sell them the still boiler. It is my understanding that a plumber was running hot water into the jacket of the still boiler under pressure. No pressure relief valve was on the jacket. We would have certainly put one on the jacket if we had sold them the still pot. The jacket was built for low pressure steam 15 psi or less. The jacket was pressurized to around 60 psi with hot water. The wall of the inner boiler gave way inwardly. The inner wall also ruptured. The buckled ruptured section of the wall of the inner boiler must be cut out and replaced. My fabricators can fix it.

We have a large selection of great quality tri clamp and other sanitary parts and fittings at better prices than our competitors listed above. https://shop.distillery-equipment.com/ This is our site as well https://triclamp.co/

Kansftb If you would like to email me paul@distillery-equipment.com web site http://distilllery-equipment.com 417-778-6100 Paul

Kansftb, We built the boiler that Mash is referencing a couple of years ago. It is a custom built steam injection boiler. You can inject hot steam directly into the mash in a still or mash cooker. We have those in 2 distilleries steam injecting 300 gallon whiskey stills and we have them in 5 or 6 more distilleries injecting mash cookers. They work great but you must reduce the operating capacity of your still by 20%. We no longer build them. We never had any problems with them. We just stopped selling them because we can sell our jacketed baine marie stills for less than what it costs for a still or mash tun and the steam injection boiler. In fact, for just a little more than what you paid for the Hoga you could have had one of our jacketed stills with the built in electric heating system. You might also consider an electric heating system with elements directly in the mash. I can sell you the heating system complete with the controller and the copper tri clamp ferrules that can be welded directly to your still pot. Welding copper ferules directly to a Hoga still pot takes a really really good tig welder. My guys deliver our stills all over the US and they have a huge number of deliveries during the next couple of months. If they are in your area they could retrofit your still for the electric heating system or for the steam injection boiler. Where are you located?

When the flow is adjusted properly my stills will put out 150°F water from the condensers during whiskey runs. Most of my customers run their hot condenser water into plastic totes or stainless tanks and they use all of that water for their next mashing in and for CIP and other cleaning. No chiller needed in places where tap water is less than 62°F. No underground tanks needed, huge savings on heating water and really fast heat up to operating temp times for mash cookers. All of the condenser water is completely recycled.